Britblog roundup #163

Britblog roundup number 163 is now up at Philiobiblon.

Next week’s Britblog roundup will be hosted by Westminster Wisdom, and nominations should go to the usual address, britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

Why engineers are over-represented in terror cells

Why are engineers over-represented in terrorist cells? Here’s why.

Under-mentalists kill their child

Dale Neumann and Leilani Neumann are contemptable subhuman filth. Why? Because they killed their child, through denying her medical care which would have saved her life. Why would anyone do that, you ask? Because their religious beliefs told them to:

Wisconsin authorities will consider filing charges in the case of an 11-year-old girl who died on Easter Sunday of complications from diabetes that went untreated because police say her parents’ obscure religious beliefs do not allow medical intervention.

(via Balloon Juice)

The Internet? Just a fad!

Courtesy of Paleo-Future, here’s an article in Newsweek from 1995 that predicts the Internet has no future of importance. Some selections:

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Why should religion get a free ride?

Chris Dillow notes that Gordon Brown is privileging religion:

What is a conscience? This is the question Brown opened when he said that “exercising your conscience will mean for Labour Party members a free vote” on parts of the embryology bill.

But, as Janine asks, why should conscience only permit a free vote here? To take just one example, many Labour MPs consciences might – or should – stop them wanting to put people in jail for 42 days without charge. But there’s little hope of a free vote on the Counter Terrorism bill.

What Brown means by “conscience”, then, is “religious belief.” Which raises the question: why should religious beliefs have a special status in politics that allows MPs free votes when they don’t get them on other grounds?

Why should religion be privileged above other belief systems? Dillow says it shouldn’t be. I go further than that: religious beliefs should be accorded less respect, less status, than for example secular liberal beliefs.

There are about 6 billion people in the world, and about 100 million of them die every year. Most of these people die of diseases, many (or all) of which could be curable over time with medical research. So medical research saves lives, and being against medical research — which opponents of the embryology bill are — kills people. Hitler only killed 50 million or so; these people want 100 million potentially preventable deaths to happen every year.

Most of the religious people who oppose the embryology bill are I suppose in their private lives good and decent people; certainly the vast majority don’t personally go round killing people. Which leads me to the conclusion that although good people do good things, and bad people do bad things, it takes religion to make good people do bad things.

Free our bills!

MySociety (the people behind They Work For You, The Public Whip, etc) want parliament to publish bills in a better way electronically so that citizens can more easily see what’s going on in Westminster. They’re calling this campaign Free Our Bills:

Writing, discussing and voting on bills is what we employ our MPs to do. If enough MPs vote on bills they become the law, meaning you or I can get locked up if they pass a bad one.

Bills are, like, so much more important than what MPs spend on furniture.

The problem is that the way in which Bills are put out is completely incompatible with the Internet era, so nobody out there ever knows what the heck people are actually voting for or against. We need to free our Bills in order for most people to be able to understand what matters about them.

They need this information so that they can make information about bills better available to the public:

Unless Parliament produces better bills:

• We can’t give you email alerts to tell you when a bill mentions something you might be interested in.
• We can’t tell you what amendments your own MP is asking for, or voting on.
• We can’t help people who know about bills annotate them to explain what they’re really going on about for everyone else.
• We can’t build services that would help MPs and their staff notice when they were being asked to vote on dumb or dubious things.
• We can’t really give a rounded view of how useful your MP is if we can’t see their involvement with the bill making process.
• We can’t do about 12 zillion other things that we’re not even bright enough to think of yet.

The actual technical changes they need to do this are fairly simple, and appear to be well thought out.

If you think this is worthwhile (if you live in the UK, you should do) then you can join their campaign via the form on their web page.

Why there won’t be sanctions against China

Justin McKeating at Chicken Yoghurt explains why the Chinese government’s repression in Tibet won’t meet with international sanctions:

We know they’re bastards but we’re addicted to cheap tat. They could build a Death Star in high orbit if they like, we’re not going to rock the boat. It’s why we’re not seeing wider outrage. If it was Cuba doing this, people would be going ballistic.

Indeed.

Britblog roundup #162

Britblog roundup number 162 is now up at Liberal England.

Next week’s Britblog roundup will be hosted by Philobiblon, and nominations should go to the usual address, britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

I guess I won’t be flying with that airline, then

I won’t be flying with any airline that takes up this idea:

Force everyone to wear a bracelet that, when remotely activated, gives the person a debilitating shock.

No, really. A company is trying to commercialize this idea.

I wonder what happens when the computer controlling this fails, and gives everybody a shock? Or when someone is shocked who has a medical condition which is made worse, or they die? Somehow I don’t think this has been fully thought through.

Britblog roundup #161

Britblog roundup #161 is up at The Wardman Wire.

Nominations for next week’s Britblog roundup should go to the usual address, britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.